What is the absorber in the printer?

Printers are often used at home when there is a need for large quantities of printouts. And if the cartridge refilling doesn’t surprise anyone, then the message that the absorber is overcrowded and the subsequent blocking of the printer will take many by surprise.

The absorber is a special compartment in a printer with a sponge into which excess ink is collected. His many more jokingly called "diapers". The presence of the absorber can only boast inkjet printers.

To be more precise, the absorber collects not the excess ink, but the part, which is a technical product of consumption. From the ink cartridge merge into a small, specially designed for this compartment, from where with the help of the pump through the tube they are pumped.

This happens in the following situations:
When you turn on the printer. Often, during idle time, air bubbles accumulate, and the printer discards a small amount of ink to get rid of them.

Reference: sometimes this process happens right during printing.

• When cleaning the head.
• When forced cleaning nozzles.

Important: in the latter two cases, a sufficiently large ink discharge occurs, so that one should not often get involved in such procedures. In addition, this will lead to a constant refilling of the cartridge.

The absorber does not have a clearly defined boundary, by which it transmits a signal to the printer that it is full. The device does not store information on how much ink is in the discharge, but it counts the number of discharges. After the maximum number is exceeded, a message is displayed that the absorber is full, and all printer functions are automatically blocked until corrected.

Absorber zeroing

When filling the absorber for further work, it is necessary to clean and zero it. It can be done:

• in the server center, paying for the service;
• independently, but you have to find and download special software that allows you to reset the absorber.

Cleaning an absorber is not an entirely pleasant pleasure. The compartment is washed separately from the sponge. The latter, as a rule, is strongly impregnated with ink, which makes the process of washing it difficult. You can replace the sponge with a new one. Some manufacturers include a replacement in the original printer, but it is available for separate purchase.

Reference: despite the overcrowding message, the absorber at this point usually has room for several ink drops. And if you urgently need to reprint a few pages, you can reset the absorber without cleaning.

Actual zeroing also in the event that you rarely print a little, but received such a message. In some models, it is issued after a set period of time. If you practically did not use the printer during this time, then the cleaning of the absorber can be neglected.

To avoid constant cleaning, which is important for large print volumes, it is possible to artificially transfer ink discharging not into a sponge, but through the tube to the outside into a separate container. This will greatly simplify the task of replacing the fibrous material or its very brand washing, and you can simply pour out the contents.

Reference: the need to zero the absorber while avoiding will not succeed, since this message is programmed to issue, but if there is a special program it will not take much time and effort.